ADDENDA. 147 



swarms are in motion their presence is supreme, which 

 is principally in the evening, night, and early morn ; 

 and is sometimes well taken in the day time. All the 

 day flies of this month and last are good at their times of 

 hatching, and in the evening the duns, and the drakes 

 after they have cast their skins ; some of the early flies 

 may have past their prime, but probably not wholly off 

 the water. Continue the maggot or cod bait, for the 

 old smelt keep coming down during the fore-part of 

 the month, and use the hackles as they may answer. 

 Trout are in the eddies at the head of the deeps and in 

 those behind stones, &c., in the streams. 



MINNOW. It is said the trout takes the minnow 

 better this month than any other, which may be from 

 his increasing appetite for substantial food. In clear 

 water keep out of his view, and 'fish up the stream 

 with No. 3. tackle and bait ; in dark brown water he 

 is good through the day, but if he flag, change for the 

 the fly or worm. Each of these baits has its votary,, 

 and a good flyfisher, a good minnow fisher, and a good 

 worm fisher will within the same day each kill their 



nature has given them wonderful instinct and power to surmount diffi- 

 culties. Many influences of wind, weather, etc. vary their places of resort, 

 and their apparent numbers, and also the successes of all fisheries. Some- 

 times they are scarce, at others abundant. In hard fished salmon localities, 

 the net may scare away a hundred into other quarters, while it takes one ; 

 for nothing is more instinctively alarming to fish, than the meshes of a net 

 staring them in the face, and they have memory and reflection sufficient to- 

 guard them against repeated dangers. Like a hard-fished trout stream, 

 although full of trout, scarce a fish can be taken until the absence of the angler 

 or a flood, restore confidence. Nature's aggregate myriods can be but little 

 affected by human means. The small flyfisher nibbles at the smelt, as the 

 school-boy at the minnow, or the pigeon at the marl rock ; and all smelt and 

 salmon angling is no more than taking a few panniers from the shoals 

 of herrings which, like the salmon, surround our Isles. 



